Death Sits Down to Dinner (17 page)

In between delicate bites of cake, the offering of sandwiches, and the cutting of a large Victoria sponge cake oozing raspberry jam and cream, Matron recounted a seemingly endless catalog on the unsuitability of Miss Gaskell as a companion, listing all her faults and finding nothing to recommend in her.

“… Now of course with Sir Reginald being murdered under the poor lady’s nose, where is Miss Gaskell to help and comfort her mistress, I ask you? Upstairs in bed with a cold, so I have been told. Well I’m sure she is cast low; she had such high hopes for Sir Reginald and now they have been dashed once and for all.”

“Indeed, Matron? I had wondered…” Mrs. Jackson tried not to lean forward.

“Oh yes, she had plans there all right; all wide eyes and demure little gestures, all ‘yes, Sir Reginald, no, Sir Reginald.’ It was sickening to watch. Of course he was far too busy to pay attention. But that little miss was always finding an excuse to come here when he was at Kingsley House on business. Little errands to run for Miss Kingsley, all of them made up, I’m sure. Then I understand from Macleod that she was the talk of the servants’ hall in Chester Square, always thrusting herself forward when Sir Reginald came to call on Miss Kingsley.”

“Sir Reginald didn’t return her interest? I mean, Miss Gaskell is an attractive young woman with a pleasant manner…”

Matron shot her a shrewd look and pressed her lips together. “Sir Reginald was embarrassed for her,” she finally said. “His only interest lay in the welfare of the boys and helping the brightest and ablest of them to make a useful life. He was a good Christian gentleman, devout, and with a strong sense of right and wrong … and morality. That is our purpose here at Kingsley House, Mrs. Jackson, first and foremost, to instill in these young heathens a sense of right and wrong, and to help them take their place in the world. No, Sir Reginald was polite but remote with Miss Gaskell.

“And now perhaps you had better meet with the boys. There are six of them this year, chosen by Sir Reginald himself just last week.” She pulled out a piece of crumpled paper from under her apron, glanced at it, put it down on the tray, got to her feet, and waded across the room.

Mrs. Jackson had no intention of talking to the boys with this old busybody evaluating her every word. “I think I would like to meet with them individually and alone, Matron. It is always interesting to see how boys do with complete strangers, away from the people they know. I have some specific tasks in mind for the charity evening and I want to make sure that the young men we choose are able to fulfill them.” This was her longest speech so far, and Mrs. Jackson realized that if Matron had underestimated her when she first arrived, she did not do so now. She was evidently displeased to be deprived of the opportunity to meddle in her interviews, but Mrs. Jackson had been sent by Miss Kingsley, and Miss Kingsley was God in this house, too, of that Mrs. Jackson had no doubt.

“Very well, I will put you into the sick bay, as I have to get on with my inventory of the laundry here. Just tell me when you are finished and who you have chosen.”

Mrs. Jackson was taken down a wide corridor and shown into an empty room with twelve beds ranged in two lines of six on either side of the room. A strip of India drugget ran down the center to a large white-painted desk at the end. Matron pulled forward a wooden chair that had been standing by the door and set it in the middle of the room, and then puffing with exertion left her to it.

Mrs. Jackson walked to the window and looked out onto the stark lawns and tidy flower beds, cut down and mulched for the winter and scattered with the remnants of fast-melting snow. Despite the dull gray winter sky, the sparse winter landscape, and the scarlet brick, Kingsley House was on the whole a reasonably agreeable place, better by far than a parish workhouse or orphanage, thought Mrs. Jackson. There was a knock on the door and she called out to come in.

The door opened and a pleasant-looking boy came into the room; he was perhaps the same age as Symes, but there the similarity ended. Whereas Symes was a thin and weedy little specimen, this boy was tall for his age, with clear, fresh skin and a glossy, well-set-up look about him.

“Matron asked me to come straight in, but I thought I had better knock.” He walked into the room and introduced himself as Daniel Phelps, and then he stood in front of her, his large brown eyes fixed on her face, alert to what she might need from him.

“There is nowhere for you to sit but on the bed,” said Mrs. Jackson.

“I’ll stand—we are not allowed to sit on the beds, ma’am.” And he stood with his hands at his sides and waited.

Mrs. Jackson was not at all sure what she should be asking this polite young man. “How long have you been here, Daniel?” she finally ventured.

“Since I was six. I will be nine next month.” His body was still but his eyes flitted to the corner of the room as if he expected to see someone there.

“Matron says you are a good scholar, and that you work hard at your lessons.”

The boy nodded and shifted his weight.

“Who is your schoolmaster?” she asked in slight desperation.

“Mr. Crosby for mathematics, Mr. Carruthers for French and Latin, and Mr. Newhouse for geography, history, and English.” The young eyes were watchful but not unduly so.

Mrs. Jackson drummed up another inane question: “And I suppose you will go away to school soon?”

“Yes, ma’am, I have been accepted into Saint Austin’s. Sir Reginald particularly wanted me to go there.” There was no evident pride in his voice, it was a statement of fact.

She felt unsure what to ask next and then inspiration struck. “What do you want to do when you leave school?” It was the right question, and he answered with real enthusiasm, the first he had shown.

“The Indian Civil Service. I am hoping to take Hindi next month if they can find a tutor.” This was the most animation she had seen in him. He was strangely docile, she thought, there was no real spark there; just a nice, dutiful middle-class boy, with not a trace of the East End in his carefully formed vowels and consonants. She would have given anything to know more about his previous life and how he had come here. But she didn’t trespass and cause embarrassment. She knew how hard it was to acknowledge the lack of parents and the awful shame children felt at being abandoned.

“Are you familiar with Miss Kingsley’s charity event, the one she holds at her house every year?”

“Yes, I am familiar with it.”

“Then you know we like to have some of you young men to meet the people who are interested in the charity. To help the butler take coats and hats, show our guests to their seats in the salon, and help out all round. Do you think you would enjoy that?” She saw the slightest hesitation, his fair skin flushed and his young face wrinkled in concern.

“Do you tell us exactly what we are to do? I would hate to make a mistake and ruin things.”

“Oh, it is not a difficult job at all. But you might find it interesting. Don’t worry about the details too much, everyone is there to have a pleasant evening and that includes you young men.”

She interviewed the next five boys and found there was not much difference among them; all were well-mannered, scrupulously clean, with none of the blots, scrapes, bruises, falling-down socks, and ink-stained fingers that Lord Haversham had exhibited when he was that age. She was talking to the same boy over and over again, she thought, as if they had stepped off a conveyor belt in a manufactory, newly made in one another’s likeness. They were all extremely polite and attentive, and every one of them exhibited concern that they do a good job at the charity and “not let the Chimney Sweep Boys down.” Afterward she wondered if any of them were ever unruly or broke rules, if they shouted, whistled, and threw stones. It didn’t matter how different their backgrounds had been before they arrived here, as they were now neatly institutionalized. She wished she could observe them in their common room, away from adult supervision.

When the last boy was about to leave, she took a risk.

“Tell me, Edwin,” she said, and he turned back to her at the door. “Was Sir Reginald Cholmondeley a kind man to you all?” She was instantly rewarded with a look of consternation—a rabbit in the entrance to its burrow when it emerges and finds a stoat waiting there. Transfixed, he gazed at her silently.

“Sir Reginald took a good deal of interest in how well you did here. He must have been like a … father to you boys.”

Edwin didn’t answer.

“Did he spend a lot of time with you?”

“Sometimes,” came the cautious answer, and he reached for the door handle.

Into her mind flashed something she had seen briefly at the top of Matron’s list of the boys she was to meet that morning, the word
Chums
and then underneath it the six names. It had taken her a moment to make the connection:
Cholmondeley
written thus was pronounced “Chumley,” and this group of perfect boys must have been referred to as Chums.

“Were you one of the Chums?” she asked before she could stop herself, and then with a flash of intuition: “That was Sir Reginald’s society for boys who excelled, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.” His hand closed around the door handle, but he did not open the door.

“What sort of activities did you excel in? Sports, literature prizes, that sort of thing?” Now she was sure what questions she wanted answered.

“We have to excel in everything: academics, sport, comportment, and doing our duty to the school and the governors.” It was a mechanical answer, but his eyes were watchful and he did not take his hand away from the doorknob.

“That must have been taken a lot of effort to accomplish; you must be a hardworking boy.

Edwin turned around and gave her a thoughtful look. “Yes, we have to work hard here. We want to be a credit to the charity.”

“I am sure you are,” she said, hoping to reassure. And she saw the relief on his face as he left the room without a backward glance.

Mrs. Jackson sat on in the sick bay with its rows of empty beds and thought about the boys she had interviewed. It didn’t matter in the slightest which ones came to help at Chester Square, they were all equally acceptable. But she thought Edwin, Clive, George, and Albert would probably more than adequately fit the bill for taking hats and coats and helping during supper. She did not doubt for one moment that they would do a thorough job, far better than Jenkins’s luckless and ill-trained Clumsy Footman. She sighed and stared across the room. They were all such earnest boys, extremely conscious of their duty to the charity, and so careful with their answers.

When Mrs. Jackson returned to Matron’s parlor she found her sitting at a desk, working on her laundry inventory. She was running a pencil down a column of figures and obviously performing rapid mental arithmetic; the tip of her tongue protruded from between large yellowing teeth and she was breathing quite heavily. Her small, deep-set eyes lifted from her work as Mrs. Jackson came into the room and in one smooth movement she closed the book and slid it under a stack of bills skewered on a spike to the left of her on the desk. She got to her feet and came around her desk.

“Got what you came for, did you?” Her belligerence was palpable. “Yes, I wondered why you wanted to talk to the boys on their own, and so I spoke to Edwin when you had finished questioning him, and what I want to know is why were you asking about the Chums, ay? There are no favorites here, Mrs. Jackson, all the boys are treated the same.” Matron came toward Mrs. Jackson, her head down: a large sow protecting a farrowing house full of piglets. Mrs. Jackson fully expected the woman to butt her in the stomach and she almost took a step backward.

“Matron,” her voice was cold, “Sir Reginald Cholmondeley often talked of the Chums. He said they were his most promising boys. Naturally, I needed to know if his death had upset them. If they are distressed about the death of Sir Reginald, it would not do to bring them to the house where he was murdered. I am sure you understand the necessity of my questions, now.”

She had stopped Matron in her tracks, but the woman was still uncomfortably close. Angry eyes were staring intently into her face. Mrs. Jackson felt a momentary surge of alarm and an irrational fear that at any moment Matron might lift a mighty arm and hit her.
Don’t be so ridiculous,
she told herself,
she’s just a mean-spirited woman who bullies little boys. But why does she care so much about my questions?
She stood her ground and began to pull on her gloves to disguise the fact that her hands were shaking a little.

“Now, you listen to me, dear,” Matron said. “I know a snoop when I see one, and you can tell Miss Kingsley from me that all the boys here are doing well, even with the terrible loss of Sir Reginald. And,” a large, hard finger came up and thrust itself under Mrs. Jackson’s nose, “there is no need for you to return to Kingsley House. Send a note with Macleod as to which boys are needed and they will be sent over promptly.”

She makes them sound like chattel,
thought Mrs. Jackson. Obviously in Matron’s view the Chimney Sweep Boys were from the gutter and any of them who did not conform could just as easily be returned there. How could someone so coarse and mean in spirit have charge over children in an institution that prided itself on producing gentlemen?

Matron took a step back and Mrs. Jackson turned toward the parlor door. “There is no need for you to come downstairs with me, Matron, I can find my own way out.” And she left the room and walked down the corridor with the slightly shaky feeling that always comes when someone large and nasty has revealed true spite and malice for no understandable reason.

As Mrs. Jackson came down the last three steps into the hall she turned and saw standing in a corner at the top of the corridor the small outline of Symes, his face to the wall.

Poor little chap he must have been running again
. She walked over to the boy. “Hullo, Symes. Do you often have to stand in the corner?”

He turned and regarded her solemnly. “Yes, often, I’m afraid. It’s for running in the house. I am always trying to catch up, you see.”